Wednesday, 14 September 2011

Indonesia time!

10th September 2011

The flight to Singapore was good, it was only about 4.5 hours. I couldn't really sleep so I just watched a couple of movies and ate some bad airline food, I was pretty tired by the time we got to Singapore though and this showed when I went to wait for my rucksack at the luggage carousel which would actually only appear when I reached Jakarta - I waited about 25 minutes before I realised this.

I had a couple of hours to wait before my flight to Jakarta so I made my way to the departure lounge, drank tea and dozed for a while. Later on I met my Indonesian friend who's family I will be staying with, Dee, and Pete her husband. They are on holiday in Indonesia to visit their family for two weeks, we had planned to meet but they coincidentally happened to catch the same flight as me from Singapore - so that worked out pretty well! And we were only a few seats apart! They presented me with a gift of a box of 80 PGTips tea bags which I was very happy to see! :D

The flight to Jakarta from Singapore was only just over an hour long. In Jakarta airport Pete bought his Visa and while Dee and I waited we noticed the huge queues to get through immigration. While we were grumbling about the queue we were about to join we were approached by a member of airport staff who Dee negotiated with and we ended up paying him a backhander to get our passports stamped immediately and then skipped the queues entirely! :D

Dee's family met us at the airport and we drove to Bandung, about 3 hours drive. We stopped in a restaurant for dinner and I had my first Indonesian food which was really good. We got to the house in the evening and I had a wash and crashed out quite early as I had no sleep on the plane and I was uber tired! Dee's family are all very friendly and made me feel right at home - so makasih! :)